About Us

Libraries of Hope is a library of resources (books, fine art, music, stories, etc.) meant to inspire the heart and instill hope. For a more complete explanation of how to use all the resources available in the site, watch the LOH Tour video in Section 5 of the Catch the Vision course.

The Well-Educated Heart is a pattern of learning focused on educating the heart. We believe, as Aristotle taught, that "educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all." We offer the Libraries of Hope as a resource to help facilitate educating hearts. We wish there was a quick and dirty way to explain all that it entails, but since for most people it's an entirely new way of looking at education and learning, the only way to understand it is to "catch the vision" for yourself. To help facilitate this, we have created a free introductory Catch the Vision course. And you don't have to go through it alone! We have a Mothers of Influence community ready to help you through every step of the way, and it's FREE to join.

Belle Ame at Home is a community of families centered in artful living. This is a way for you to "see" what artful living looks like in action. BAAH serves as a familiar stepping stone and tool, especially for families who are new to WEH. There you'll find Inspiration Stations, stories told by wonderful storytellers, classes, clubs, and more. To learn more, please visit our Mighty Networks platform at belleameathome.org. Fees do apply, but we don't want to leave anyone out. Please contact us for scholarships and other help if the price is not doable right now.

BAAH is also the fundraising arm of our non-profit, Belle Ame Center for Artful Living. All proceeds contribute to building and expanding the Weatherby MO Campus. To learn more, visit belleamedream.org.

The Rotation is a 12-month course of study that allows you to touch on subjects involving the whole world and everything in it! You come back to it year after year, always building upon what you learned, adding more and more layers and deepening your understanding. It is your servant, not your master. Like we said elsewhere, there are no "have tos" here. Use it to fit your needs.

You'll find tons of resources in Catch the Vision and Mother's University to help you on your journey to learn about WEH and how to implement it. And in the Rotation, you'll find lots of resources for you and your children to start exploring the world and everything in it! This includes podcasts to help you sample books and pique interest; a link to Biblioguides, a wonderful resource to search thousands of additional books to read; free audios from Marlene at BelMonde; free fine art sorted by topics and nations that you can print out at Simple Joy: Fine Art; a link to the Mothers of Influence (MOI) site to help you gather your friends in this process; free history "courses" (My America Story Book and My World Story Book) with short stories to read or listen to every day, as well as pictures to use for notebooking; the Forgotten Classics Family Library, which holds all our books and compilations (available to view as free digital reads or purchase as hard copies); and a free app (Apple and Android) to easily navigate everything.

No, WEH is not a curriculum. Heart learning is a very individually-based process, so we can't tell you what to have your children read or when to read it. We don't believe in asking specific questions to direct their learning, as each individual will learn something different from every book and every activity, and the "answers" they receive will likely be different at various phases in their life. So we can't tell you exactly how to do this, or what it will look like for you, because it is different for everyone. What we do is offer you a plethora of wonderful resources--a grand buffet--to choose from, at your leisure. With the Well-Educated Heart, there is no "have to." You direct your own path!

This is for anyone who cares about learning how to educate hearts using the arts: stories, music, art, poetry, and nature. It doesn't matter if your children homeschool, go to public or private school, are out of school...or even if you have children at all! This is for anyone wanting to provide a balance to the mind aspect of education. First, start with filling your own heart. Then, help your children. Or your grandchildren. Or your nieces and nephews. You can dive in head first, or dip your toe in the waters...whatever makes the most sense for you and your family.

We have striven to keep this program as open to as many people as want to participate. There is a strong emphasis on faith in the WEH pattern of learning, for we believe as Charlotte Mason said, education is "something between the child's soul and God." And many of the authors of the pre-1920s books we frequently reference and print come from a Christian background. But we welcome people of all beliefs and invite you to cater the program to fit your needs. There is Truth and Beauty found here than we can all benefit from. Marlene, the founder of Libraries of Hope and "finder" of the Well-Educated Heart, is open about her beliefs, but will explicitly mention when things she is discussing are more "doctrine" based, which she does only occasionally.

The videos on the home page will give you a brief overview of what we're about, so they're a great place to start. Then you can jump into the introductory Catch the Vision course to learn about this new (to most of us) method of learning. Some have found the first few podcasts helpful as well (you can find a good portion of them linked in Month One of the Mother's University). As you go, you can also work your way through the Take 5s, which are brief audios (usually around five minutes long) giving samples and explanations of practical ways to implement the things you are learning. We also invite you to join our free Mothers of Influence community, where you can discuss your journey with other mothers on the same path.

Consider using the Forgotten Classics as your spine. These are wonderful, heart-warming stories we've collected and organized around the rotation. There are links to relevant books in each month of the Rotation, or you can find all the series in their entirety here. For an explanation of the series (and some of the reasoning behind them), you can watch the Forgotten Classics Family Library videos in Section 5 of Catch the Vision.

To supplement this spine, the Libraries of Hope has compiled over 4,000 titles for you to choose from. We have partnered with Biblioguides, which gives you the resources and tools to discover the right book for the right person at the right moment. (For those of you more accustomed to our old site, these titles are still listed there, we just will no longer be updating them.) Many of these books can be read online for free, so peruse them and see what grabs you or your children! We also highly recommend using My Book House (we reference the 1971 edition) and Junior Classics (we reference the 1962 edition).

The best place to connect with others going through their WEH journey is to join our FREE Mothers of Influence community. You can also find hands-on learning via Belle Ame at Home. We have a very active Facebook group with lots of people willing to offer advice and who are there learning right along with you. You can also join the "100 Days of WEH" group, where mothers offer day-to-day examples of what they're doing in their homes and with their families. If you'd like to ask Marlene in particular a question, you can use the "Contact Us" form down below.